An activist challenged Russian officials after they blocked his protest against election fraud. Now he’s been jailed on drug charges and accused of ‘involvement in a Ukrainian armed group.’

Filed 6h ago · Via Meduza · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: User:Michael180 (User:ThePlaz on Commons) · CC BY-SA 2.5 · via Wikimedia Commons

A court in Izhevsk ordered activist Dmitry Morozov held for two months on charges of possessing 0.38 grams of mephedrone, while a prosecutor separately claimed, without elaboration, that there is 'information' tying Morozov to 'involvement in a Ukrainian armed group.' No further details were disclosed.

Morozov, a democratic socialist, had tried to organize a rally against fraud in the State Duma elections and, after city authorities rejected his application, sued City Hall and appealed to the presidential administration, winning an order for city authorities to reconsider. He was detained on October 2 and denied access to a lawyer for more than 24 hours.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A tenth of a gram under half a gram of a drug, paired with an unexplained accusation about an armed group nobody bothers to describe, is not a case so much as a message with a court stamp on it. The message seems to be: win your lawsuit, lose your freedom. It's a tidy little lesson for anyone else in Udmurtia thinking about filing paperwork against the people who run things.

Source: Read the original at Meduza → Scored: Scheming Weasel faster · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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